The Flower That Is Textured Like Milk
He looked at the fair skin near the neck, the collar bone that scooped out a deep hollow, the long neck that sloped softly into the pearly sari. She seemed like a child, a play mate from his village hiding and waiting to be revealed. His eyes softened and rested on her a whole minute wishing her not to look at him, for he knew that if their eyes met the temptress would drag him to the mud.
He looked at the things in the drawer of his table, the things that she forgot during her visits to his room – a wooden bangle, a large ear stud, a vaseline tube, an eyeliner bottle. He packed these trivias and dropped them in the garbage can outside the house. He did not realise that he still carried the bus ticket that she used as a book mark in his book on Kural, and a browned jasmine flower pressed accidentally between the pages.
She was dressed in a dark blue sari, the turquoise stone on her ears caught the fluorescent light and threw a pale glow on her cheeks. She had painted her lips a deep pink, her hair was drawn in a formidable bun, a red rose was tucked on a side of the bun. She had pulled her sari tight over her chest and the curves of her breast heaved as she breathed deep. There were lines near her mouth, and her eyes were puffed. She was evidently in a turmoil.
His embalmed body was flown to Chennai from Frankfurt and she had flown from Singapore to Chennai on receiving the news. She had packed her clothes into a suitcase hastily. His bathrobe lay on bed and the faint smell of aftershave that he dabbed just before leaving remained in his bathroom. She closed her flat that still had his presence and flew with friends to Chennai on receiving the news of his death. She had looked at the world through his eyes. That was the first time she was travelling without him or her grown up daughter who was then studying in Chennai. Her husband had joked many times of having two children, one who has grown up and the other who will never grow up. She gazed into the empty darkness through the window of her flight. She looked keenly into the space and wondered if this was the emptiness that everyone disappears into after they die. Was her husband somewhere here? It was hard for her to develop this thought. She had seen him off at the elevator and had rushed to the balcony to see the car drive out of the apartment building. She lay on the bed that carried the warmth of his body, lazed around desultorily picking from the floor the things that he had strewn around as he hastily got dressed to take the early morning flight. She did not clean the apartment and spent the day biting into the left- over of previous night’s dinner. She micro waved the dosa and soaked it into cold coconut chutney and ate it. She sprawled on the large sofa in her housecoat and drained down mugs and mugs of filter coffee. She looked at the Singapore evening sky spill red wine laced with mauve at the edges, behind the high-rises. This was how she spent the time when her husband travelled. She did not call on friends, stayed up the whole day without cooking, boringly ran through magazines, surfed TV channels. She spoke to her daughter at 20.30 Singapore time. She did not bother to calculate the time zone of the cities her husband visited, he always called and spoke several times during his travels. She just waited, all activity called off when he was not near her. When she opened the door she found Anand and Ravi with their wives. So early in the morning, she wondered. No one generally called impromptu like this. Anand and Ravi were her husband’s colleagues. She invited them in and asked to be excused to rush in and brush her teeth. They did not reply, she went in thinking that their presence was odd at so early an hour. At the back of her mind she kept expecting a call from her husband. A hollow pain gripped her stomach, she looked searchingly at the four sitting around her. For a moment a strange thought ran though her brain. What had her husband to do with these four people who have barged into her house? She could not hold a single thought as she was getting restless. The thought that it was past her husband’s arrival time back home rattled her. She needed to be alone to figure out what delayed her husband. She needed to talk to him. Anand cleared his throat and started speaking to her gently, “I received a call late last night form Henrik.” Henrik was her husband’s counterpart operating in Frankfurt. “Your husband felt uneasy just as he was boarding his flight. The airport authorities had given immediate medical help and moved him to a hospital. They called Henrik as that was the last person he had spoken to before taking ill.” She listened to this as she would to a story, this as yet had nothing to do with her husband, and she was expecting his call anytime now. “The doctors say Srini had a massive heart attack, they ….” She silenced Anand mid way, “What?” “Srini was very serious by the time they reached him to the hospital. The doctors did their best…” A whip of cold air lashed her face, she woke up to the grammatical subtext. The subtext acted as a spoiler to the story, it let the story run ahead. At the same moment, the import of Anand’s unsaid text hit her, the line dividing Anand’s words and her life merged. She gasped and she wanted to ask Anand to stop. Words didn’t flow out. Anand said, “You have to be brave, Prema. Srini is no more.” Prema made a rasping sound that was close to a laugh, the words that Anand said hung in the air, and it made no sense to her. She just stared for a few moments at these intruders who were messing her perfect morning. She felt the mess could be cleared, just make a few changes, go back a few minutes and have her husband call from the airport. Prema cradled into herself, pulled her leg very close to her chest and sank her head on her knees. She experienced an agonising urge to have Srini hold her. A frightening darkness engulfed. Something snapped in her, a wave of terror tore through her. The muscles around her mouth contorted and the howl that rose from her stomach choked at the throat. She coughed it up loudly and ended up wailing as saliva spilled from the sides of her mouth. Anand and his wife comforted her, rocked with her as she cried. After a few minutes Anand said, “We have contacted Srini’s brothers in Chennai. They will tell your daughter about Srini. They want you to come over to Chennai. Henrick is flying Srini’s body to Chennai.” Prema winced at the logistics of planning that men were capable of carrying out even when the gravest of catastrophe hits them. Anand said “You have to speak to your daughter.” Prema shook her head. “Is there any one else in Chennai whom you think can comfort your daughter till we reach there?” Prema suggested the names of her cousins and gave their phone numbers that she knew by heart. She recollected suddenly that one of her cousin’s numbers has changed, racked her brain where she had noted it down and fetched the number for Anand. Anand’s wife brought tea for everyone; the smell of boiled milk filled the house. The rays of the morning sun fell on the burgundy coloured Kashmiri carpet. Anand spoke to her cousins, she now got used to listening to “Srini is no more” that Anand repeated with every call he made. She sank her head on the sofa and closed her eyes. Anand then got busy booking air tickets to Chennai. A few more friends joined, the driver had come and taken the key for the car, and a few neighbours came and sat near Prema. She heard the ring of puja bells – Mukerjee’s morning arthi, thought Prema. She saw the young couple who lived at the flat opposite to hers return back after their early morning dash to the grocers down the street. Broccoli and lettuce spilled out of the large brown paper bag that the young wife carried. They were as always so self absorbed that they did not notice the crowd gathered at Prema’s flat. Prema noticed that nothing around her has changed; Mukerjees continue their puja uninterrupted; the gardener would have opened the sprinkler on the lawn. The routine that she noticed around her comforted her a little. She wished that people would not crowd around her, the crowd made her home appear like an alien space. ———————————————————————————– This post is for someone I know, she lost her husband recently in tragic circumstances
She wanted to call him and ask him to push aside the lock of hair that had fallen on his forehead. She didn’t and this image of him stayed with her, her hands reached into the emptiness to brush aside the lock.
When she looks into the mirror she sees her mother. She peers close and observes that a grey hair streaks across the dull brown hair. She dolefully observes that she is greying at the same place that her mother greyed. Buy her mother greyed after she crossed fifty, and the black lustrous hair was so thick that it could not be enclosed in the palm. Her own hair is thinning near the forehead - though just forty she feels fifty. Her complexion has attained placid wheat brown as against her mother’s glorious golden colour; her features once sharp are smudged by the onset of middle age. The melancholy dip of her eyes while in deep thought is from her mother.
She stands at the mirror in the bathroom to catch the glimpse of her mother and hold her there. She has not let her mother go, her mother has so insidiously settled in her memory and the subconscious that she never got up in the mornings alone. Her mother woke up with her and she experienced the gentle breath and warmth of her mother when she cradled herself in the large rocking chair to read a book. Now her double - her mother - has moved to the apparent level. She sees her double, her mother, in the contours of her face and in every curve of her body.
So much has her mother coalesced with her that she does not see where one ends and the other begins. She closes her eyes and the wooden door of her mother’s parental home opens in her mind. She lives her mother’s life; her mind maps the landscape of her mother’s childhood in Mylapore.
